Psychopathy pt 2 (theories) Flashcards
What are the 3 main theories behind why psychopaths exist?
Dysfunctional amygdala
Paralimbic dysfunction
Response Modulation hypothesis
What were the results shown in Hare et al’s study on psychopaths and their skin conductance response to a noise blast?
Psychopaths showed a smaller SC response
What relationship was shown in Patrick et al’s study with emotional state and startle response?
Their startle response does not increase when presented with the unpleasant picture and a reduced relaxation response to the pleasant picture
Which factor is the emotional modulation driven by in Patrick et al’s study?
Factor 1
Did the emotional state also affect skin conductance response?
No, there was no affect of psychopathy on SCR
What association was shown in Esteller et al’s study on the Tri-PM and startle response
Boldness was associated with reduced startle response to threat stimuli and no affect on other affective stimuli
What association was shown in Esteller et al’s study on the Tri-PM and startle response
Boldness was associated with reduced startle response to threat stimuli and no affect on other affective stimuli
What do you have to do in the Lexical Decision Task?
Decide if the letters make a real word
What relationship was found between emotional words and psychopaths in the Lexical Decision task?
Psychopaths DO NOT speed up with emotional words like normal people
Results show they possibly go slower, especially with negative words
What is the response modulation hypothesis?
Psychopathic individuals have very focused attention at the expense of others
If attention is properly allocated then the emotional deficit could disappear
What did Dadd et al about children with psychopathic tendencies and spotting facial expressions?
They were poor at doing this and failed to spend time looking at the eyes
When presented ONLY eyes the deficit disappears
In Newman et al’s study, how did psychopaths perform in the fear focused and alternative focus conditions in terms of their startle response?
Fear-focus = no effect of psychopathy
Alt-focus = reduced FPS response for Factor 1 psychopaths
In Gray et al’s replication study, why did they use sound rather than shocks?
More evocative than shocks
Doesn’t cause early constriction of the pupils
What the result of Gray et al’s study of pupil constriction and negative noise effects
Reduced effect of negative sounds in psychopathy and confined to meanness scale of Tri-PM, Affective component of SRP and reward dependence and co-operativity of TCI)
What has been found about the link between psychopathy and emotion recognition
The studies vary in results, first thought they were poor at this but others see them be better at it.
